"Vestal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Troy's extinguish'd glory Revived in Latium's later story, When, by her auspices, her son Laurentia's royal damsel won. She vestal Rhea's spotless charms Surrender'd to the War-god's arms; She for Romulus that day The Sabine daughters bore away; Thence sprung the Rhamnes' lofty name, Thence the old Quirites came; And thence the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... village across the water. Ships left the village and went by them to sea gay with the bunting of a first voyage, with a fair wind, and on a fine morning; and when such a ship came back long after as an old plank bearded with sea moss, to the dunes under which it stranded the day was still the same, vestal and innocent; for they were on a voyage of greater length and import. They had buried many ships; but, as time moved to them, all ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... rob her of her freedom and independence; the horror that love or the joy of motherhood will only hinder her in the full exercise of her profession—all these together make of the emancipated modern woman a compulsory vestal, before whom life, with its great clarifying sorrows and its deep, entrancing joys, rolls on without touching or gripping ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... and to make a supplication for one day. These things were executed according to a decree of the senate. The extinction of the fire in the temple of Vesta struck more terror upon the minds of men than all the prodigies which were reported from abroad, or seen at home; and the vestal, who had the guarding of it for that night, was scourged by the command of Publius Licinius the pontiff. Although this event was not appointed by the gods as a portent, but had happened through human neglect, yet it was thought proper that it should be expiated with victims of the larger ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes It pays Affection's debt, is due concern To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes, While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame Memory shou'd hourly feed;—if, thro' each day, She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say, Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame, O! can the alien Heart expect to prove, In worlds of light and ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... I saw, but thou could'st not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all-arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair Vestal throned by the West, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watry moon, And the Imperial Votress passed on, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... were six in number, and were called VESTAL VIRGINS. When a vestal was to be elected, the Pontifex Maximus chose twenty young girls from high families. Of these one was chosen by lot to fill the vacancy, and she was bound to serve for thirty years. The Vestals were preceded by a lictor when in public. They had ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... things which are above humane Strength, that no man living could do without Diabolical Assistances? Claudia was seen by Witnesses enough, to draw a Ship which no humane Strength could move. Tuccia a Vestal Virgin was seen to carry Water in a Sieve: The Devil never assists men to do supernatural things undesired. When therefore such like things shall be testified against the accused Party not by Spectres which are Devils in the ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... bungling piece of work, and naturally felt his disadvantages more keenly in the presence of those upon whom Nature had expended all her best art. He was, according to his own assertion, an idealist by temperament, and had kept a sacred chamber in his heart where the vestal fire burned with a pure flame. Now the deepest strata of his being were stirred, and he loved with an overwhelming fervor and intensity which fairly frightened him. In a moment of abject despair he proposed to Emily, and to his surprise was accepted. And what was more, it was ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... but the reader may be well satisfied if he clearly know these eight. The group they form is an entirely distinct one, exactly intermediate between the Vestals and Draconids, and cannot be rightly attached to either; for it is Draconid in structure and affinity—Vestal in form—and I don't see how to get the connection of the three families rightly expressed without taking the Draconidae out of the groups belonging to the dark Kora, and placing them next the Vestals, with the Monachae ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... up and down for hours. The sun set, and the night came, and the stars glittered; but still he walked alone, inspired, exalted, full of generous and loving schemes: of sweet and tender fancies: a heart on fire; and youth the fuel, and the flame vestal. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... chin to meet the throat. She too wore the conventional sailor suit, but without color, and this effect of purity, the inscrutable delicacy of her, seemed to set her apart from these dark, materialistic sisters as though she had strayed like a lost vestal into the wrong atmosphere. His brows relaxed. For a moment the censor that had come to hold dominion in his heart was off guard. He felt the magnetism of her personality drawing him once more; he desired to cross the deck to her, drop a word into those deep places he had discovered, and see her ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... find the god of his own country; so in its re-consecrated state, each country could find its patron saint. Other temples were changed and re-consecrated in the same manner. The ancient statue of Jupiter stands now as the statue of St. Peter. The pagans had their vestal ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Queen of Crete To take a town-bull for her sweet, And from her greatness stoop so low, 395 To be the rival of a cow: Others to prostitute their great hearts, To he baboons' and monkeys' sweet-hearts; Some with the Dev'l himself in league grow, By's representative a Negro. 400 'Twas this made vestal-maids love-sick, And venture to be bury'd quick: Some by their fathers, and their brothers, To be made mistresses and mothers. 'Tis this that proudest dames enamours 405 On lacquies and valets des chambres; Their haughty stomachs overcomes, And makes 'em stoop ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... other Scylla, from whom the rock opposite Charybdis was named, was a beautiful maiden, beloved by the sea-god Glaucus, but changed into a monster through the jealousy and enchantments of Circe. The mother of Romulus: Silvia, daughter and only living child of Numitor, whom her uncle Amulius made a vestal virgin, to preclude the possibility that his brother's descendants could wrest from him the kingdom of Alba Longa. But the maiden was violated by Mars as she went to bring water from a fountain; she bore Romulus and Remus; and she was drowned in the Anio, while the cradle with ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... freend Horatio through those feeldes Where neuer-dying warres are still inurde; Ile lead faire Isabella to that traine Where pittie weepes but neuer feeleth paine; Ile lead my Bel-imperia to those ioyes That vestal virgins and faire queenes possess; Ile lead Hieronimo where Orpheus plaies, Adding sweet pleasure to eternall daies. But say, Reuenge,—for thou must helpe or none,— Against the rest how ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... now? I think a whiff of the Jersey ferry would be as flagons of cod-liver oil to me. Who conspicuously walks the Rialto now, and what does he or she wear? Are the trees still green in Madison Square, or have they grown brown and dusty? Does the chaste Diana on the Garden Theatre still keep her vestal vows through all the exasperating changes of weather? Who has your brother's old studio now, and what misguided aspirants practice their scales in the rookeries about Carnegie Hall? What do people go to see at the theaters, and what do they eat and drink ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... are more stupid, they are more steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than those ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... writing. That I was shipped at sea I well remember, but whether there delivered of my babe, by the holy gods I cannot rightly say; but since my wedded lord I never shall see again, I will put on a vestal livery ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... us a sweet picture of the domestic Woman, in his Economics, but in the Cyropedia has given, in the picture of Panthea, a view of Woman which no German picture can surpass, whether lonely and quiet with veiled lids, the temple of a vestal loveliness, or with eyes flashing, and hair flowing to the free wind, cheering on the hero to fight for his God, his country, or whatever name his duty might bear at the time. This picture I shall copy by and by. Yet ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was stooped with the weight of years, And on his cheek was a trace of tears; Over all his face a shade of pain That deepened and vanished, and came again. Fixed he his woeful eyes on me— Through my very soul they seemed to see. And lightly he laid his hand on mine— His hand was cold as the vestal shrine. "'Tis haunted," he said, "haunted, and he Who dares at night-noon go with me To this cursed place, by phantoms trod, Must fear not devil, man, nor God." "Tell me the story," I cried, "tell me!" And frightened was I at my bravery. A curious smile ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... worshipful sisterhood, bedaubed, by way of insignia, with red and white chalk or clay, follow her from the village to some remote nook in the jungle, where the lodge is tiled. Sentinels are stationed around whilst business is transacted before a vestal fire, which must burn for a fortnight or three weeks, in the awe- compelling presence of a brass pipkin filled with herbs, and a basin, both zebra'd like the human limbs. The Rev. William Walker was once detected playing "Peeping Tom" by sixty or seventy viragos, who attempted ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... shall hem his ashes in: The vestal virgins with their holy notes Shall sing his famous, though too fatal, death. I and my Fulvia with dispersed hair Will wait ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, voluptuary, voluptuous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... "so it will be. They will be charred to ashes." And turning tail, she fled to the kitchen, pursued by her lover. There, dead to the surprise of the servant, David Brandon fed his eyes on the fair incarnation of Jewish domesticity, type of the vestal virgins of Israel, Ministresses at the hearth. It was a very homely kitchen; the dressers glistening with speckless utensils, and the deep red glow of the coal over which the pieces of fish sputtered and crackled ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... country and nation she might have been a distinguished dame de salon. As it was, she was sufficiently harassed and overworked in her double office of decorous, authoritative chaperon and qualified guide, philosopher, and friend to the girls under her charge. These might be vestal virgins or nymphs of Minerva, but they were also girls, so long as the world lasted—the most of them half curious, half friendly where May was concerned. This was true even of the wonderful young American who came and ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?" "Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by morning this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your breakfast." Thereupon he ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... inhabitants left the city, as the people of Athens had done when the army of Xerxes approached. It was resolved to abandon the city to the barbarians, but to maintain the citadel, the home of the gods of Rome. The holy articles in the temples were buried or removed, the Vestal Virgins sent away, and the flower of the patricians took refuge in the Capitol, determined to defend to the last that abiding-place of the ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... him her hand. "Perhaps that's the worst of it. If I should lose your esteem I should go into a convent." She dropped his hand, and snatching a bunch of violets from the table, fixed them in his button-hole, looking up in his face with vestal sweetness. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... N. purity; decency, decorum, delicacy; continence, chastity, honesty, virtue, modesty, shame; pudicity[obs3], pucelage[obs3], virginity. vestal, virgin, Joseph, Hippolytus; Lucretia, Diana; prude. Adj. pure, undefiled, modest, delicate, decent, decorous; virginibus puerisque[Lat]; simon-pure; chaste, continent, virtuous, honest, Platonic. virgin, unsullied; cherry [coll.]. Phr. "as chaste as unsunn'd snow" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... meekest maid— Hail! purest Pearl that time's great sea hath borne— May our white souls, in purity arrayed, Shine, as if they thy vestal robes had worn; Make our hearts pure, as thou thyself art pure, Make safe the rugged pathway of our lives, And make us pass to joys that will endure When the dark ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... obviously personal, Rena's new vestal instinct took alarm, and she began to apprehend his character more clearly. She had long ago learned that his pretensions to wealth were a sham. He was nominal owner of a large plantation, it is true; but the land was worn out, and mortgaged to the limit of its security value. His reputed droves ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... made a complete and universal conquest. In the darkest ages and most benighted regions, it has been found impossible utterly to extinguish the light of reason. There always have been some in whose souls the torch of truth has been kept burning with vestal watchfulness: we can discern its glimmer here and there through the deepest night that has yet settled upon the earth. In the midst of the most extravagant superstition, there have been individuals who have disowned the popular belief, and considered it a mark ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... he would never consent to any "editing" of Harte's story. This was agreed to, and when the publisher came back, a few days later, the embargo was removed. The Luck of Roaring Camp was printed as it was written, and printing office and vestal proof-reader survived the shock.' ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... will permit us to look a little deeper into its heart, we will attempt to celebrate that unpublished and vestal wisdom written there. Age does us only indirect justice,—by the value it gives to memory. It slights and forgets its own present. This day with its trivialities dwindles and vanishes before the teeming hours wherein it learned and felt and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the plays we see posted at the doors of our theatres. The French of the time of Louis XIV. must have been a much more refined people than the contemporary English. At least, Thalia in Paris was a vestal, compared with her tawdry, indecent, and drunken London sister. One is ashamed to be seen reading the unblushing profligacy of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... the buzz of the crowd, The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud Some comment upon his gay humor that day? He never was gayer: what makes him so gay? 'Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune, Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be nameless, That vestal that yields to Mars ONLY is blameless! Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled, stirs All his heart into tumult?... Lucile de Nevers With the Duke's coupled gayly, in some ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... among us enjoyed the beauty of this scenery so much as Clara. Before we quitted Milan, a change had taken place in her habits and manners. She lost her gaiety, she laid aside her sports, and assumed an almost vestal plainness of attire. She shunned us, retiring with Evelyn to some distant chamber or silent nook; nor did she enter into his pastimes with the same zest as she was wont, but would sit and watch him with sadly tender smiles, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... happiness of being able to send you an account of the capture of Seringapatam. The news is brought by a letter from a Dr. Abercromby, who was sent with Lord Cornwallis's despatches, in the 'Vestal.' He put this letter on board another vessel in the Channel, and it ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... did not so absolutely crawl in the dust before her, as did almost all the so called men of her court; though he did certainly flatter her after a fashion in which few queens can be flattered. His description of the belligerent old Gorgon as the "Fair Vestal throned by the West" seems like the poetry and fancy of the beautiful Fairy Queen ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... my turbulent and worser self and felt the nobler regenerated by the innocent companionship you gave me. I wanted you, but it was not the touch of hands or lips, the soft encounter of eyes, the tones of tenderness, I wanted most. It was that something beyond my reach, vital and vestal, invisible, yet irresistible; that something, be it heart, soul, or mind, which drew me to you by an attraction genial and genuine as itself. My Sylvia, that was love, and when it came to me I took it in, sure that whether its fruition ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... All this is very true, but not at all applicable in this instance. This time Racine is well judged. The denouement is the most ridiculous I ever heard. Imagine that silly, conceited Junia turning vestal, as if Madame de Sennes were to enter the Ursuline Convent. Heaven forbid that I should play the scholar; but I have read in Menage that it required other formalities to take the veil in the convent of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... bedroom between them: he did not show it me. Good wine: excellent. Pretty waiting-maids, exceedingly pretty. Two of seven Vestals, who maintain the domestic fire on the hearth of the young Numa. By the way, they had something of the Vestal costume: white dresses with purple borders. But they had nothing on their heads but their own hair, very gracefully arranged. The Vestals had head-dresses, which hid their hair, if they had any. They were shaved on admission. Perhaps the hair was allowed to grow again. Perhaps not. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Light to a Cigar Evening Amusement Trip to MATANZAS—El Casero Slave Plantation Sugar Making Luxuriant Vegetation Punic Faith and Cuban Cruelty H.M.S. "Vestal" Bribery Admiralty Wisdom Cigars and Manufactory Population—Chinese Laws of Domicile—Police and Slavery Increase of Slaves and Produce Tobacco, Games, and Lotteries Cuban Jokes Sketch of Governors ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... her which made it necessary that he should assert mere sportiveness on his part as his reason in seeking her—something in her quite antipathetic to that side of him which had been occupied with literary study and the magnificent Christminster dream. It had been no vestal who chose THAT missile for opening her attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short; fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp one might momentarily see an inscription on a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Thee impart What charms in Genius, and refines in Art; Thee, in whose hand the keys of Science dwell, The pensive portress of her holy cell; Whose constant vigils chase the chilling damp Oblivion steals upon her vestal-lamp. The friends of Reason, and the guides of Youth, Whose language breath'd the eloquence of Truth; Whose life, beyond preceptive wisdom, taught The great in conduct, and the pure in thought; These still exist, by Thee ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... It is full of reminiscences of Haydn's "Creation" and other works. The musical stimulation of this boy was meager indeed. Not until he was thirteen years of age did he hear an opera; and not until he was fifteen a really first-class work, Spontini's "Vestal," in 1812. Three years later he probably heard Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride," a work which in his estimation eclipsed them all. During the same year there were the sixth and seventh symphonies, the choral fantasia and portions of the mass in C, and the overture to "Coriolanus," ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... are in a large measure the ancient prototype of the modern nun, and their house is the prototype of the convent. Six nobly-born young women, sworn to chastity, and dressed in a ritual garb, live in an edifice of much magnificence under the rule of one who is the chief Vestal, a sort of Mother Superior. Many pedestals of the statues of such chief priestesses still remain, and we can clearly trace the arrangement of their abode, with its open court—once containing a garden ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... closed thy wings For ever. When the happy living things Of the old world come forth upon the new I know my heart shall miss thee; and the dew Of summer twilights shall shed tears for me —Tears liker thee, ah, purest! than mine own— Upon thy vestal ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... clothes—and be as splendid as your career is going to be. I want to be a great and shining lady in your life. I can't always live as I do now, dependent on my mother, whirled about by her movements, living in her light. Why should I be just a hard-up Vestal Virgin, Stephen, in your honor? You will not be able to marry me for years and years and years—unless you neglect your work, unless you throw away everything that is worth having between us in order just ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... presents, for the first time in fiction, a correct and adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and privileges, as well as of many strange Roman ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-law, his will was opened and read in Mark Antony's house. He had made it on the ides [13th] of the preceding September, at his Lavican villa, and committed it to the custody of the chief of the Vestal Virgins. Quintus Tubero informs us, that in all the wills he had signed, from the time of his first consulship to the breaking out of the civil war, Cneius Pompey was appointed his heir, and that this had been publicly notified to the army. But in his last will, he named three heirs, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... And he had believed most honestly that this very detachment had drawn him to Valentine more than to any other human being. But to-night he began suddenly to feel that to be actually side by side with his friend would be a very glorious thing. He could never hope to walk perpetually upon the vestal heights. If Valentine did really come down towards the valley, what then? Just at first the idea had shocked him. Now he began almost to wish that it might be so, to feel that he was shaking hands with Valentine more brotherly than ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... clearly on the sandstone, not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms—all were English in their details. Only the vines, and mulberries, and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect, reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such carpenta may the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease; and Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman gods in even such a vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban hill. Nothing changes in Italy. The wooden ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... objection, and is read by discerning men with the same incredulity. It is all on one side. No answer has reached our times. Yet on the showing of the accusers the accused seem entitled to acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man could cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... o' the world, and beats all wing of rhyme, And knows not; 'twixt the sun and moon Her inexpressible front enstarred Tempers the wrangling spheres to tune; Their divergent harmonies Concluded in the concord of her eyes, And vestal dances of her glad regard. I see, which fretteth with surmise Much heads grown unsagacious-grey, The slow aim of wise-hearted Time, Which folded cycles within cycles cloak: We pass, we pass, we pass; this does not pass away, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... end of time dig into the graves where such queens lie entombed. This woman has slept serenely for nearly a century. Sweet oblivion has dimmed with denial and forgetfulness the obloquy which hunted her in her last days. Tears such as are shed for vestal martyrs have been shed for her, and for all her faults she has the condonation of universal sorrow. Nothing but the evil magic of sympathetic malice can restore these calumnies, and even then they quickly fade away in the sunlight of her life. Nothing can touch ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... bewildered your understanding," exclaimed the lady. "Whatever my ambition may be, my morality is unimpeached; a vestal would lose none of her purity ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of imagining her not human like the other women and the men I had known, but a creature apart and in a class apart, I stood day after day gaping at that very door, and wondering how I could open it, how penetrate even to the courtyard of that vestal citadel. So long as my old-fashioned belief that good women were more than human and bad women less than human had influenced me only to a sharper lookout in dealing with the one species of woman I then came in contact ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... job—for Ella Monahan. I wish I had the gift of eloquence. I wish I had the right to spank you. I wish I could prove to you, somehow, that with your gift, and heritage, and racial right it's as criminal for you to be earning your thousands at Haynes-Cooper's as it would have been for a vestal virgin to desert her altar fire to stoke a furnace. Your eyes are bright and hard, instead of tolerant. Your mouth is losing its graciousness. Your whole face is beginning to be stamped with a look that says ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... during the holidays. They carried down some basket chairs, tacked a few coloured pictures from annuals on its bare walls, and made it look quite pretty. Tom lighted them a blazing fire every day, and tended it during their absence with the care of a vestal virgin, so they were extremely cosy and jolly there. The joiner's bench and the glue-pot gave facilities for any hobbies they wished to carry on; they could make as much noise as they liked, and walk in and out with dirty ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... thou talk of love To Marcia, whilst her father's life's in danger? Thou might'st as well court the pale, trembling vestal, When she beholds ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... would have made a fine study for a painter. By such men, the embers of learning and of science were nursed into a faint but steady flame, burning through the long, gloomy night of the dark ages, unseen by profane eyes, like the vestal fire ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... rapidly through the streets, of what had occurred. The soldiers whom Claudius had sent forward, were making arrests in the streets, and searching the houses. In the midst of this excitement, Messalina, with her children, attended by one of the vestal virgins, named Vibidia, whom she had prevailed upon to accompany her and plead her cause, came forth from her palace on foot, and proceeded through the streets, her hair disheveled, her dress in disorder, and her whole appearance marked by every characteristic of humiliation, abasement, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... of Alexandria, that fact was patent even to the great son of Lagus; and what would become of our commerce with Cos if I did not purchase the finest bombyx stuffs, since those who sell it make no profits out of you, the queen—and you cover yourself, like a vestal virgin, in garments of tapestry. Give me a wreath for my head—aye and another to that, and new wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and to your health, Publius Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical conjecture, my Aristarchus—to subtle thinking and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... telleth as much and more of herself, "I counterfeited honesty, as if I had been virgo virginissima, more than a vestal virgin, I looked like a wife, I was so demure and chaste, I did add such gestures, tunes, speeches, signs and motions upon all occasions, that my spectators and auditors were stupefied, enchanted, fastened all to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Titus, in the open air. The company was on the grass in the area; the music at one end; boxes filled with the handsome Roman women occupied the other sides. It was a new thing here, this popular dinner, and the Romans greeted it in an intoxication of hope and pleasure. Sterbini, author of "The Vestal," presided: many others, like him, long time exiled and restored to their country by the present Pope, were at the tables. The Colosseum, and triumphal arches were in sight; an effigy of the Roman wolf with her royal nursling was ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... under the old civilizations. In Rome she had not only secured remarkable personal and property rights,[178] but she officiated as priestess in the most holy offices of religion. Not only as Vestal Virgin did she guard the Sacred Fire, upon whose preservation the welfare of Rome was held to depend, but at the end of every consular period women officiated in private worship and sacrifice to the Bono Dea, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... value of our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; Yet why should hallow'd vestal's sacred shrine Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be, Than a few embers, for a deity. Had he our pits, the Persian would admire No sun, but warm 's devotion at our fire: He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer Our ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... crowded round the abbess. They had been accustomed to look up to her as all-powerful, and they now implored her protection. The mother abbess looked with a rueful eye upon the treasures of beauty and vestal virtue exposed to such imminent peril. Alas! how was she to protect them from the spoiler! She had, it is true, experienced many signal inter-positions of providence in her individual favor. Her early days had been passed amid the ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... attendants believed him to be asleep. The house contained two large rooms and as many small ones. One of the former served for kitchen and sitting room; in the other lay the father of Birch; of the latter, one was the sanctuary of the vestal, and the other contained the stock of provisions. A huge chimney of stone rose in the center, serving, of itself, for a partition between the larger rooms; and fireplaces of corresponding dimensions were in each apartment. A bright flame was burning ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... toil is a more than Vestal world. It is true that males can sometimes be perceived in it; but they appear only at particular seasons, and they have nothing whatever to do with the workers or with the work. None of them would presume to address a worker,—except, perhaps, under extraordinary circumstances of common peril. And ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... would-be coquette, A brow of marble, but a heart of jet; An eye that shows no vestige of the deep And stained thoughts that in her bosom sleep: By day a vestal, but by night a bawd; Her ways a riddle, her whole life a fraud; At church an angel, but at home a shrew, Cheating her mother, to her sire untrue; Vain without talent, without merit proud; By all who see her, still a fool allow'd; Without all love, with but the show of truth, She stares and ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... that Christ was miraculously born of a virgin, the Pagans had said before them that Remus and Romulus, the founders of Rome, were miraculously born of a vestal virgin named Ilia, or Silvia, or Rhea Silvia; they had already said that Mars, Argus, Vulcan, and others were born of the goddess Juno without sexual union; and, also, that Minerva, goddess of the sciences, sprang from Jupiter's brain, and that she came out of it, all armed, by means of a blow ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... at last by that same fire, Burning to help, a sleepless Vestal, dowered With lightning-quickness, rushing from desk to clock, Or measuring distances at dead of night Between the lamp-micrometer ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... OF PRIMEVAL FIRE! YOUR vestal train Hung with gold-tresses o'er the vast inane, Pierced with your silver shafts the throne of Night, 100 And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with light; When LOVE DIVINE, with brooding wings unfurl'd, Call'd from the rude abyss ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... nominee of the convention.[157] Such machine-like precision warmed the hearts of Democratic politicians. The editor of the People's Advocate declared the integrity of Douglas to be "as unspotted as the vestal's fame—as untarnished and as pure as ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... he was my friend, noble and brave, and I begged his body, that I might burn it upon the funeral-pile, and mourn over him. Ay, on my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that boon, while all the Roman maids and matrons, and those holy virgins they call vestal, and the rabble, shouted in mockery, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale, and tremble like a very child, before that piece of bleeding clay; but the praetor drew back as if I were pollution, and sternly said, 'Let the carrion rot! There are no ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... typical variations of the scene galante by Pater. We next note 659, a fine portrait group by Nattier: Mlle. de Lambec as Minerva, arming her brother the young Count of Brienne. To the same skilful portraitist are due: 660, a Knight of Malta; and 661, A Daughter of Louis XV. as a Vestal Virgin. By Boucher are: 48, R. of entrance, The Painter in his Studio, and R. wall, 47, The Three Graces; 46 and 49, L. wall, Venus and Vulcan, and Vulcan's Forge. Fragonnard is represented by some of his characteristic works executed with wonderful sleight ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... principal object of solicitude in the family group, to which the attention of our concealed spectators had been directed, followed, with slow and hesitating steps, her still importuning friends into the yard, where, in her bridal robes of vestal white, and with her rich profusion of bright and wavy tresses hanging like a golden cloud over her shoulders, she stood at once a vision of loveliness and an object of commiseration. Again and again did ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... 6. The Vestal Virgin; or the Roman Ladies, a Tragedy, 1665. In his prologue to this play, Sir Robert has the following couplet, meant as an answer to Dryden's animadversions on the Duke ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... splendid, the Roman general in his chiselled corselet and dyed mantle faces the Greek actor in his tinsel; the band of painted, half-clad, bedizened dancing-girls falls back cowering in awestruck silence as the noble Vestal passes by, high-browed, white-robed, untainted, the incarnation of purity in an age of vice. And the old Senator in his white cloak with its broad purple hem, his smooth-faced clients at his elbows, his silent slaves before him and behind, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... should vex thee, I did bring That worshipped wafer by the Vestal given; Then, with loose robes and linen stole, did sing Nine prayers to ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... among them; and seeing that the worship had been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... of his spirit; by her mild winning eloquence she would persuade him that for Don Carlos other objects must remain, when his hopes of personal felicity have been cut off; she would change his love for her into love for the millions of human beings whose destiny depends on his. A meek vestal, yet with the prudence of a queen, and the courage of a matron, with every graceful and generous quality of womanhood harmoniously blended in her nature, she lives in a scene that is foreign to her; the happiness she should have had is beside her, the misery she must ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... is no longer the cold vestal that came to Venice as your wife. Her eye is bright, her cheek is flushed, her lips are parted with womanly longing. I congratulate you upon the change. Your love has at last awakened a corresponding sentiment, and now is your time to woo ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... her shoulders like weighty serpents. She drew them up into a crown on the top of her head—this was comfortable for sleeping—so that, by reason of her straight profile, she looked like a Roman vestal. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... his religion, that, appearing as thou dost On an horizon new flushed in the first Uncertain ray of Altruism, thou seem'st More ghost than human. Yet thou lovest, loving ghost, And thy fierce parent flame thyself snuffed out Scarce later than the dark'ning of the fire Thou gav'st to be eternal vestal of Thine Antony's spirit. Thou didst love and die Of love; let, therefore, no light tongue, brazen In censure, say that nothing in thy life Became thee like the leaving it. The cloth From which humanity is cut is woven of The warp and woof of circumstance, and ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius, the struggle of Mettus Curtius through the marsh, the women rushing ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Vesta, called Vestales or Vestal Virgins, played a conspicuous part in these festivals. They were six in number, and were chosen—between the ages of six and ten—from the noblest families in Rome. Their term of office was thirty years. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of her head, she threw her long black hair over one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely-exaggerated classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know, that among a thousand such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers as Mr. Harry ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... demonstrative; while, of necessity, she was calm, cold, dignified—or simply passive. She was never unamiable or capricious; and rarely opposed him in anything reasonable or unreasonable. But she was reserved almost to constraint at times—a vestal at the altar, rather than a loving wife. He was very proud of her, as well he might be; for she grew peerless in beauty. But her beauty was from the development of taste, thought, and intellect. It was not born of the affections. Yes, Leon Dexter ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... her, do I woo? Because her spirit's vestal grace Provokes me always to pursue, But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; Because her womanhood is such That, as on court-days subjects kiss The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch Affirms no mean familiarness, Nay, rather marks more fair the height Which can with safety so neglect To dread, as lower ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... nor small, Which quantum sufficit the doctors call; Let this estate from parents' care descend: The getting it too much of life does spend. Take such a ground, whose gratitude may be A fair encouragement for industry. Let constant fires the winter's fury tame, And let thy kitchens be a vestal flame. Thee to the town let never suit at law, And rarely, very rarely, business draw. Thy active mind in equal temper keep, In undisturbed peace, yet not in sleep. Let exercise a vigorous health maintain, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... her cooking and cleaning; from all alike we hear of an active, genial, warm-hearted girl, full of humour and feeling to those she knew, though shy and cold in her bearing to strangers. A different being to the fierce impassioned Vestal who has seated herself in Emily's ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... furniture people I wanted it just as it stood in the picture: "Design for bedroom and boudoir combined, suitable for young girl, in teak, with sparrow blue hangings." We had everything: the antique fire arrangements that a vestal virgin might possibly have understood; the candlesticks, that were pictures in themselves, until we tried to put candles in them; the book-case and writing-desk combined, that wasn't big enough to write on, and out of which it was impossible to get a book until you ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... grandsire, i.e. Numitor, the father of the Vestal Rhea or Ilia. Mavortius child of Mavors, old and poetic name for Mars. 778. Assaraci: King of Phrygia and grandfather of Anchises. 779. geminae cristae. The double-crested helm, adistinction of Mars. 780. superum for the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... traveled on, and came to a great city, where, upon his arrival, he understood there was a great and solemn procession, in order to shut up a young woman against her will among the vestal-nuns. The prince was touched with compassion; and thinking the best use he could make of his cap was to redress public wrongs and relieve the oppressed, he flew to the temple, where he saw the young woman, crowned with flowers, clad in white, and with her disheveled ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... temple of the sun The vestal fires of being burn; Thence beauty's finest fibres run, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the mighty King of Akkad. My mother was a vestal (priestess), my father an alien, whose brother inhabited the mountain.... When my mother had conceived me, she bare me in a hidden place. She laid me in a vessel of rushes, stopped the door thereof with pitch, and cast me adrift ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... good to anyone. I understood perfectly that I had acted in an unpardonable manner; for Her Majesty's Maids of Honour were kept, or were supposed to be kept, in very great seclusion at home, as if they were Vestal virgins—which was indeed a very great supposition. Tale after tale came back to my mind of those Maids in the past—of Mademoiselle de la Garde herself, of Miss Stewart, Miss Hyde, Miss Hamilton, ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... way was left) I came.' 'O Sir, O Prince, I have no country; none; If any, this; but none. Whate'er I was Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. Affianced, Sir? love-whispers may not breathe Within this vestal limit, and how should I, Who am not mine, say, live: the thunderbolt Hangs silent; but prepare: I speak; it falls.' 'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there, I think no more of deadly lurks therein, Than in a clapper clapping in a garth, To scare ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... a thin, fleecy scarf of clouds was silvered by the rising moon, the west was a huge shrine of beryl whereon burned ruby flakes of vapor, watched by a solitary vestal star; and the sapphire arch overhead was beautiful and mellow as any that ever vaulted above the sculptured ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... gladiators. Highly carved marble columns supported the roofs and the rarest statues stood in niches. The bathing capacity was the largest ever planned. To sit there alone and people it, as when it was at its best, with all the glory of the emperor, the court ladies, the vestal virgins, senators, warriors, artists, men of letters and the rest, is a treat to the imagination that cannot be ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead, And that thou think'st thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see: Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think Thou call'st for more, And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink; And ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... tumblers, conjurers, allegories, martyrdoms, marriages, elephants on the tight-rope, learned horses, and learned asses too, if we may trust Apuleius of Madaura; with a good many other spectacles of which we must not speak in the presence of a vestal? It is an age of execrable taste, and we must ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of Apulius, as some say, tho' according to others the Son of Mars by one of the Vestal Virgins, built the City of Rome, and reign'd there 37 Years; after him reigned six Kings successively (their Names are of no Consequence) but the Wickedness of the last King put an end to the regal State, and introduced ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... furious over the thought of a woman learning much, and still more, venturing to use such acquirement; but heretical Christians insisted that the respect which Romans had paid to the Vestal Virgin was her right, and each founder of a new sect had some woman as helper. But as a rule, her highest post during the first three centuries of Christianity was that of doorkeeper or message-woman, her economic dependence upon man being absolute. Social problems ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... was very sweet, very pure and noble. She would have gone without another word, but Haward caught her by the sleeve. "Stay awhile!" he cried. "I too am a dreamer, though not like you, you maid of Dian, dark saint, cold vestal, with your eyes forever on the still, white flame! Audrey, Audrey, Audrey! Do you know what a pretty name you have, child, or how dark are your eyes, or how fine this hair that a queen might envy? ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... given to her, and wherein she acted a part of impregnable chastity, she bespoke the favour of the ladies by a protestation that in honour of their goodness and virtue she would dedicate her unblemished life to their example. Part of this vestal vow, I remember, was contained in the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... back to the walls of Troy. The form of it passed with the windmills that Don Quixote charged. It is with you to keep the high spirit of it an ever-burning vestal fire. It was a deadly play of old—it is a harmless play to you this day. But the prowess of the game is unchanged; for the skill to strike those pendent rings is no less than was the skill to strike armor-joint, visor, or plumed crest. It was of old an exercise for ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... thoughts Best left imprisoned in the aching heart, Lest the freed malefactors should dispread Infamous ruin with their liberty. There's not a man—the fairest of ye all— Who is not fouler than he seems. This life Is one unending struggle to conceal Our baseness from our fellows. Here stands one In vestal whiteness with a lecher's lust;— There sits a judge, holding law's scales in hands That itch to take the bribe he dare not touch;— Here goes a priest with heavenward eyes, whose soul Is Satan's council-chamber;—there ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... might not put in to shore, but had to cruise in the offing till the nine days were expired.[345] At Rome the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta was kindled anew every year on the first of March, which used to be the beginning of the Roman year;[346] the task of lighting it was entrusted to the Vestal Virgins, and they performed it by drilling a hole in a board of lucky wood till the flame was elicited by friction. The new fire thus produced was carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... materialise; in the walnut and chestnut forest around them not a leaf stirred; and gradually the mountains cleared, became inartistically distinct, and turned a beautiful but disturbing dark-blue colour. And Thusis wore her vestal veil in the full ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... the grave where Laura lay; Within that temple, where the vestal flame; Was wont to burne: and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tombe fair love, and fairer virtue kept, All suddenly I sawe the Fairy Queene: At whose approach the soul of Petrarche wept And from henceforth, those ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... Amulius, having the money, and being able to do more with that than Numitor, took his kingdom from with great ease, and, fearing lest his daughter might have children who would supplant him, made her a Vestal, bound in that condition forever to live a single and maiden life. This lady some call Ilia, others Rhea, and others Silvia; however, not long after, contrary to the established laws of the Vestals, she had two sons of more than human size and beauty, whom Amulius, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty, and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she thought was ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... universe,' and of Viracocha, 'Foam of the Sea,' a name strikingly recalling that of Venus Aphrodite, the female second principle in all ancient mythologies. Not less curious was the institution of the Vestal Virgins of the Sun, who were buried alive if detected in an intrigue, and whose duty it was to keep burning the sacred fire obtained at the festival ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of June 2 and 3, which took place on the Capitol and the Palatine, the following order was observed in the ceremonial pageant; first came Augustus as Emperor and Pontifex Maximus, next the Consuls, the Senate, the Quindecemviri and other colleges of priests, then followed the Vestal Virgins, and a group of one hundred and ten matrons (as many as there were years in the saeculum) selected from among the most exemplary matres familiae above ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... presentation in a country tavern! One is tempted to believe that the father was a man of robuster judgment in such matters than the son, whose own rather mediocre literary equipment, made him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of literature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, provided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... The vestal virgins, whose duty it was to keep the fire burning on the altar in the temple of Vesta. Vesta was the goddess of the home, and the vestal virgins were bound by ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... and the weeds and wild vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers were there—Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... the more striking when placed in obvious contrast to the ingenuous nature and calm purity that shone in every lineament of the face of Ghita. One might very well have passed for an image of the goddess Circe; while the other would have made no bad model for a vestal, could the latter have borne the moral impression of the sublime and heart-searching truths that are inculcated by the real oracles of God. Then the lady was a woman in the meridian of her charms, aided by all the cunning ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the story of her life from the things among which she was crouching. Had she indeed any life in her? It was a mystery. Yet I saw plainly that once she must have been young and beautiful; fair, with all the charm of simplicity, perfect as some Greek statue, with the brow of a vestal. ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... though unwilling, to their accustomed passions. Consider the timorous, they are afraid even of those things that preserve them. Consider the pettish, they are angry with their best and dearest friends. Consider the amorous and lascivious, in the height of their fury they dare violate a Vestal. For custom is very powerful to draw the temper of the body to anything that is suitable to it; and he that is apt to fall will stumble at everything that lies in his way. So it is no wonder that those that have raised in themselves ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... right object; it flamed up in direct fervors of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbor. It was not then only another and more cleanly name for lust. It had none of those impure heats that both represent and deserve hell. It was a vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from that which usually passes by this name nowadays as the vital heat from the ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... great community of the state the king is priest, and with that exactness of parallelism of which the Roman was so fond, he—like the pater familias—leaves the worship of Vesta in the hands of his 'daughters,' the Vestal virgins. And so, when the Republic is instituted, a special official, the rex sacrorum, inherits the king's ritual duties, while the superintendence of the Vestals passes to his representative in the matter of religious law, the pontifex maximus, whose official residence ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... number, Ugo; and moreover, she is not a woman, but a noble virgin. I discern a distinction, though you may not. The Vestal's fire burns straight." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... me. There was but a slight fee to pay, a matter of fifty dollars or upwards, and for this trifling sum you were furnished with your rightful coat-of-arms and with papers clearly tracing your family to the Druids, the Vestal Virgins, and all the best people in the world. Therefore I felicitated the Boadicean lady upon the illustrious progenitrix with whom the Almanach de Gotha had provided her for so small a consideration, ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... oration; as in his defence of Cluentius, Muraena, Caelius, Milo, Sylla, Flaccus, and Rabirius Postumus; the most striking instances of which are the poetical burst of feeling with which he addresses his client Plancius,[251] and his picture of the desolate condition of the Vestal Fonteia, should her brother be condemned.[252] At other times, his peroration contains more heroic and elevated sentiments; as in his invocation of the Alban groves and altars in the peroration of the Pro Milone, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman |
